If there’s a lesson Washtenaw Community College graduate Evan Starr wants to share, it’s that falling down and getting back up is OK. But his education — and perhaps most importantly the encouragement from his instructors — has paved a path toward his dreams in the “Country Music Capital of the World."
Starr, who earned an Audio Production and Engineering certificate from WCC in 2022, lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where he works as an audio engineer and performs with his band.
Now 25, he is the lead sound engineer for a local church and has mixed sounds for multiple events and businesses, including for The Kentucky Headhunters band in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and for the Nashville Marathon through Brantley Sound Associates.
He interned with Pegasus Entertainment and the Ann Arbor Summer Festival. Starr also started performing with a band and did a lot of work building the stage, programming lights and wiring the sound with his equipment before the shows even started.
“It was tiring work as I was also finishing school, but I was committed to carving this path for myself,” he says.
Moving to Nashville was eye-opening, and Starr admits the music industry is hard and can feel like a rollercoaster at times. Not every gig works out and securing commercial success can be challenging.
“The truth is that successes always come with failure,” he says. “On a positive note, my music is thriving. I have a new band. I’m releasing music and playing with people I idolized when I first moved here. I have grown so much as a musician.”
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This story appears in the Fall 2024 edition of Launch magazine. See complete issue.
Tags: Country Music, Launch Fall 2024, Music, Music Production, Sound Engineering, Student Success